Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-10-06

| lurlOuSiV arOll
it. Five seconds more; we were past;
| heard the roar behind me-
Then /, too. fell senseless. The mex
thing that | remember was feeling breath
Of air upon my face. My eyes opened with
great difficulty. l looked up Far. fal
| above me there was light, though around
me was deep gloom. Then I remembered
| and looked. The canoe still foated dowr
| the river, and in the bottom of it Law the
naked forms of my companions. ssWert
| they dead?" l wondered WAS I LEFT
alone in this awful placer" l knew not
| Next [ became conscious of a burning
thirst. put my hand over the eSge of the
boat into the water, and drew it up AGAR
with cry. No wonder, nearly all the Skin
was burnt off the back of it, The water
| however, was cold, or nearly So and
| drank pints and splashed myself all over
My body seemed to suck up the fluid as
one may see brick wall suck up rain after
| a drought; but where | was burnt the touch
| Of it caused intense pain. Then bethought
! myself Of the others: and, dragging myself
toward them with difficulty, [ sprinkled
them with water, and to my joy they be
| gan to recoTer-Umslopegaa first, then
the others. Next they drank, absorbing
| water like so many sponges. Then, feeling
| chllly-a queer contrast to our recent SEN
! sations-we began as best we colld to get
| into our clothes. AS we did SO, Good point
| ed to the port side of the canoe; it was all
| blistered with heat, and in places actually
| charred. Had it been built like our civil
| lied boats, Good said that the planks
would have certainly warped and let in
enough water to sink u.s. but fortunately it
was dug out of the soft, willowy wood of a
single great tree, and had sides nearly
| three inches, and bottom four inches,
| thick. What that awful flame was we
| never discovered; but suppose that there
| was at this spot crack Or hole in the bed
| of the river through which vast volume
of gas forced its way from its volcanic
| home in the bowels Of the earth toward
| the upper air. How it first became ignited,
| it is, OF course, impossible to say-proba-
bly,, should think from some spontaneous
explosion of mephitic gases
AS soon as we had got some things on
and shaken ourselves together little, we
set to work to make out where we were
now. | have said that there was light
above, and on examination we found that
it came from the sky. Our river-that
was, Sir Henry said, a literal realization
OF the wild vision Of the poet:
In Kubla Khan river ran
Through caYernS meaSureleSS to man,
Down to sunless sea,
was no longer underground, but was
running on its darksome way, not now
through 'cayernS meaSureleSS to man."
but between two frightful cliffs which can
not have been less than two thousand feet
high. SIS i:=3s vera they; indeed. that
though the SKY was above us, where we
were was dense gloom-not darkness, in
deed, but the gloom CT a room closely shut
tered in the daytime. Up on either side
rose the great straight cliffs, grim and
forbidding, till the eye grew dizzy with
trying TO measure their sheer height. The
little space of sky, that marked where
they ended, lay like thread of blue upon
their soaring blackness, which was unre-
lieved by any tree or creeper. Here and
there, however, grew ghostly patches of a
long grey lichen, hanging motionless to
the rock as the white beard to the chin of
dead man. 1t seemed as though only
the dregs or heavier part of the light had
sunk to the bottom Of this awful place.
No brightwinged sunbeam could fall SO
low; they died far, far above our heads.
By the rivers edge was little shore
formed of round fragments of rock washed
into this shape by the constant action of
water, and giving the place the appearance
of being strewn with thousands of fossil
cannon balls. Evidentally when the water
of the underground river is high there is
no beach at all, or very little, between the
border of the stream and the precipitous
cliffs, but now there was space of seven
or eight yards. And here, on this beach,
we determined to land, in order to rest
ourselves a little, after all that we had
gone through, and to stretch our limbs.
1t was dreadful place, but it would give
an hours respite from the terrors of the
river and also allow Of our repack1ng and
arranging the canoe. Accordingly we Sc
lected what looked like a favor;te spot,
and with some little difficulty managed to
beach the canoe and scramble out on to
the round, inhospitable pebbles.
''My word" called out Good, who was
on the shore first, ''what an awful place;
it's enough to give one a fit" And he
laughed.
Instantly laundering voice took up his
words, magnifying them a hundred times.
"Giue one q ft-h0! no! hOl;;' "a fit, no! no.!
ho!' answered another voice in wild ac-
cents from far up the cliff; o. fit! o. fiji O. fit!
chimed in voice after voice-each f1inging
the words to and fro, with shouts of awful
laughter to the invisi e lips of the other,
till the whole place echoed with the words,
and with shrieks of fiendish merriment,
which at last ceased as suddenly as Jney
had begun.
ooh, mon Dieur' yelled Alphonse, start
led quite out of such self-command as he
possessed.
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! mon Dieur' the
Titanic echoes Numbered, shrieked, and
walled in every conceivable tone.
"Ahp' said Umslopogaas, calmly, 'sI
clearly perceive that devils live here Well,
the place looks like it"
I tried to explain to him that the cause
of all the hub-bub was q very remarkable
and interesting echo, but he would not be-
lieve it,
''Ah.'' he said, 81 know al echo when l
hear one There was one lived opposite
my kraal in Zululand, and the Intombis
(maIdens) used to talk with it. But if
what we hear is full-grown echo, mine
at home can only have been a baby. No,
no-they are devils up there. But DONE
think much of them, though" he added,
taking q pinch Of snuff. ''They can copy